Friday, September 28, 2012

An Open Letter to Katie Bair

Warning: This post contains a lot of pictures and writing from a fairly dissatisfied customer. I'm not even sure if this will get to Ms. Bair, but I need to get this off of my chest.

Dear Katie,

I really hate to do this, and I'm actually debating whether or not I should really post this after I'm done, but I don't have any other way to get in touch with you. Your email is elusive, your site is under construction and you're ALWAYS busy.

So busy in fact that the order (two 16 ounce dye kits and 2 bottles of conditioner) that I placed on August 8th took until earlier this week to ship out (I got the notification on Tuesday the 25th. Nearly seven weeks later). I understand that you're very busy, and that your interns are busy, it's near the end of con season, you have young children at home, and that everyone wants a piece of your service. It's actually acknowledged that you're so busy that people wait for a month for your products, and have said so on cosplay.com forums. You probably have a lot of angry customers who are not so patiently waiting for your wig creations.

But this isn't a wig creation. It's four bottles of dye, which I had hoped you would keep in stock so that way an intern can just throw them in a box, run said boxes to the post office and go. I understand if my order got lost in the mess, but you took my paypal payment and I didn't hear anything. I have tried to look for a direct email to get in touch with you, but you have said on your website not to email you because of the horrendous amount of spam.

So, I waited. And waited. Bitched at some friends about how long it was taking, and then waited some more. THEN FINALLY I SAW A NOTIFICATION. LET THE ANGELS SING.

Fast forward to a few days, and I received my package. Before I opened the box, I was excited to see what the colors actually looked like in person.

Then I opened the box and smelled alcohol. My brain went "uh oh."

I'm certified in hazardous materials shipping. I'm not quite sure what the flash point of your dye is, but the fact that you wrote "keep away from open flames" on the side of your bottle is a little concerning. That means it has a flash point. As far as I know, anything that has a flash point should be packaged a little bit better than what you have it in. Even if you have to, just replace the spray bottle tops.

And now for some pictures.

This is what I pulled out, after unwrapping the paper that was surrounding it. I had to do a double take because the lighting in my living room was fairly dim. I thought I saw it incorrectly, then I realized that it was Sun Yellow dye that had leaked all over the bottles.

And some Watermelon red.

The instruction pamphlet. Not that you readers can tell, but the paper is wrinkly and a little damp.

The bottle of Sun Yellow dye. You can see the Watermelon Red that stained it as well. The label is peeling as well.

The bottle of Watermelon Red. The red didn't leak nearly as much, but it still leaked.

AND JUST FOR COMPARISON: the pristine bottle of wig conditioner.

And the warning on the side label. See why I'm a little bit concerned?

I'm not sure if any of your other customers experienced this problem. Heck, I don't even know who packaged it. For all I know, it was one of your interns.

All in all, as a consumer, I'm not happy. I appreciate the fact that you provide a dye service that makes life a little easier for the busy cosplayer, but I think I'm allowed to be an unhappy consumer after waiting for 7 weeks for my order and having it arrive in such a condition.

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Who Are We?

Pokoteng Cosplay is a group made up of the two costumers Kaye and Akira, one prop engineer Goose and one additional model Nave. This is a documentation of our successes, failures and lessons we've learned from the different techniques required for cosplay.

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Poketeng Cosplay, in no way, claims the name Pokoteng as our own. We acknowledge that the name is from Kozue Amano's works Aqua, Aria, Aria the Animation, etc. We simply are using the name for our group in honor of the rolly-polly President, with a penchant for cosplay himself.

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